Children in Nova Scotia by Helen Hunt Jackson

Nova Scotia is a country of gracious surprises. Instead of the stones which are what strangers chiefly expect at her hands, she gives us a wealth of fertile meadows; instead of stormy waves breaking on a frowning coast, she shows us smooth basins whose shores are soft and wooded to the water's edge, and into which empty wonderful tidal rivers, whose courses, where the tide-water has flowed out, lie like curving bands of bright brown satin among the green fields. She has no barrenness, no unsightliness, no poverty; everywhere beauty, everywhere riches. She is biding her time.

But most beautiful among her beauties, most wonderful among her wonders, are her children. During two weeks' travel in the provinces, I have been constantly more and more impressed by their superiority in appearance, size, and health to the children of the New England and Middle States. In the outset of our journey I was struck by it; along all the roadsides they looked up, boys and girls, fair, broad-cheeked, sturdy-legged, such as with us are seen only now and then. I did not, however, realize at first that this was the universal law of the land, and that it pointed to something more than climate as a cause. But the first school that I saw, _en masse_, gave a startling impetus to the train of observation and inference into which I was unconsciously falling.